Many people lack a factual understanding of events in our region because the media report them inadequately. We blog here because our daughter Malki, murdered at the age of 15 in a restaurant massacre in Jerusalem, was a victim of jihadist hatred and barbarism. For jihadism and terrorism to end in Israel, New York, Madrid, London and everywhere else, people first need to understand the scale on which it is happening and why. This ongoing war is killing us.

Thursday, November 08, 2012

8-Nov-12: Those Arab-on-Arab killing fields are expanding

How bad is the war situation in Syria? Measured by numbers, the picture varies widely, but it's utterly grotesque on any view. Here are some indicators to provide proportion [source]:

Deaths on all sides since heavy fighting started in March 2011: between 35,000 and 49,600. The website Syrian Martyrs says the number is 40,155 as of November 5, 2012

More than 500 children had been killed by February 2012. By last month, the Syrian group SOHR said it had risen to 2,300

A further 400 children had been arrested and tortured in Syrian prisons

Over 600 detainees and political prisoners have died under torture

Against that background, Israelis living close to our northern border, the one that separates us from Bashar Al-Assad's failed Syrian state, have grown increasingly concerned about somehow becoming caught up in the Arab-on-Arab nightmare.

This morning, the concern went up a notch.

Three mortar shells landed across Israel’s border with Syria in the Golan Heights Thursday morning... Two of the shells fell in open areas near moshav Alonei Habashan and caused no injuries or damage. A third landed inside the moshav itself — the first incident of Syrian fire hitting a residential area — but failed to explode and no damage was reported. IDF sappers were dispatched to the scene to defuse it, and the area was closed off... On Monday, an army jeep was hit by a stray bullet from Syrian territory, just days after top IDF brass toured the region. The IDF has been kept on high alert since November 3, when three Syrian tanks strayed into the demilitarized zone separating the two borders, leading Israel to lodge an official complaint with UN peacekeepers stationed in the DMZ. In September a number of mortars fired by regime forces landed in the north of the Golan Heights, and in another incident Syrian soldiers entered the demilitarized zone. [Times of Israel]

Alonei Habashan (Alonei means "oaks of" and Bashan is the name by which the Bible refers to the Golan Heights - you can see it in Isaiah 2:13) is a communal settlement located very close to Israel's Syrian border.

Something that Avi Dichter, Israel's Minister for Home Front Defence, wrote on his Facebook page is reported today on the Al Arabiya news website:

Pointing to the difficulty of pinpointing those responsible for firing the mortar bombs for possible military action against them. With “no return address,” he wrote, Israeli defence officials have to adopt “a very careful response policy.”

An analysis by security analyst Daniel Nisman that appears today on the Israeli Ynet site ["As Assad regime grows more desperate, prospects for provocative attack against Israel will only increase"] suggests that

As the Assad regime grows increasingly desperate, the prospects for a provocative attack against Israel will only increase, leading to a widely-feared regional escalation. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has already threatened that Israeli intervention in Syria would cause his militia to unleash some 70,000 rockets currently pointed at the Jewish State. It's a scenario the Israelis have planned for since it had become evident in July that military intervention could be necessary to stop Assad’s chemical weapons from being transferred to extremist groups, including Hezbollah. Meanwhile, the IDF Home Front Command has spent the last few months drilling mass casualty rocket attacks across Israel's Northern District to the point of exhaustion, while the IDF has replaced its reservist units on the Golan Heights with far more capable draft units.

As if Israel's security situation were not already complicated enough.

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THIS ONGOING WAR is not part of the activity of the Malki Foundation which was founded by us, Frimet and Arnold Roth of Jerusalem, on September 9, 2001. But it is inspired by the same tragic circumstances. The Malki Foundation (also known by its Hebrew name: Keren Malki) is a memorial to the life of our daughter, Malki. She's in the photo below this paragraph. Malki was murdered at the age of 15 in a massacre in the centre of Jerusalem carried out by Hamas.

Beyond its function as a remembrance of a beautiful life, the foundation provides tangible, concrete, invaluable support daily to several thousand Israeli families from every part of the religious and socio-economic spectrum: Christian, Moslem, Jewish, Druze and others who care at home for a seriously disabled child.

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This Ongoing War: About this blog

Many people lack a factual understanding of events in our region because the media often report them inadequately. Our daughter Malki, murdered at the age of 15 in a restaurant massacre in Jerusalem, was a victim of jihadist hatred and barbarism. For jihadism and terrorism to end in Israel, in New York, in Madrid, in London and everywhere else, people first need to understand the scale on which it is happening. This ongoing war is killing us.